Under the Radar is Silicon Valley’s most established startup debut platform: a conference series organized by Dealmaker Media, covering business applications, social media, entertainment, mobility..etc.

This year’s conference in Mountain View, CA on April 16th will focus on Commercializing the Cloud – that’s a fairly wide definition, and one that perfectly mashes with our focus over @ CloudAve, so we’re proud to be Media Partners at this event. That means we’ll be covering it before, during and after, and if you decide the attend, we’ll get you in at a discount rate.

In this American Idol of startups typically 32 finalists are selected, who are grouped in categories of 4 each and each has about 15 minutes to present in two parallel tracks. They get grilled by the judges and audience, and at the end of the conference the winners of each category are announced. A few years ago I participated in the pre-selection of startups, and I remember having checked out hundreds of companies to come down to the finalist set. At the moment 19 finalists are announced:

The Selection Committee will likely sift through another 100+ applications to fill those slots.

So if you consider your startup a (future) leader in Saas | Collaboration | Business Apps | Development Tools | Compliance | (and more!), don’t waste time, apply here to be a presenter.

A personal note: the roster so far is quite infrastructure-heavy, which I’m sure makes Krish happy… but as the dumb non-techie business guy, I’d love to see more Business Apps, too 🙂

Past presenters include: Heroku, Get Satisfaction, Marketo, Eucalyptus, Zuora, Box.net, Ribbit, Hubspot, Twilio, New Relic, CloudKick, Jive Software, and many more. Many (54%) of the UtR participant received funding, some grew to fame, others disappeared… but disappearance is not always bad – as is the case of 2008 Under the Radar graduate 3Tera, which just got acquired by Computer Associates. 🙂

Under the Radar is not only a great startup showcase, it’s perfect good networking and and deal-making forum in Silicon Valley. Stay above the clouds – see innovation in its earliest stages – and get deals done; one handshake at a time. Mingle with 350 VC’s, journalists and C-level executives seeking to find, connect and partner with startups who’s products, technology and teams fit strategically into their road maps.

That’s yours truly on the left in full glory, albeit a bit scared at a photographer’s studio.

Why black-and-white, you may ask? Well, there was no color photography back in 19xx (date censured).

This formerly black-and-white photo has turned sepia, but that may just be acceptable over 4 decades (oops, I let it slip out), but I was shocked to see some of my student-back-packer-trip color prints turn in the same shade, even though they were some 20 years younger. (I must have picked a cheap lab back then…)

I’ve long been thinking of digitizing them, but every time I got the urge I quickly realized that scanning in thousands of photos – prints, negatives and slides – would take me forever, and even then the result would be of questionable quality. So I was really happy to read raving reviews of ScanCafe, a service, that takes care of it all at reasonable prices.

Anyone can buy a bunch of scanners and start a digitizing business, but ScanCafe brought a twist to the process: they perform all processing in India, (their own employees and facility, not outsourced), which allows them to be the price-leader, yet add a level of human post-processing that ensures the best quality.

You initiate the ordering process online, where you get abundant information on the process, packaging requirements..etc, then, after paying half the estimated price you print a UPS label.

Your package first goes to ScanCafe HQ in California, where it’s examined, re-packaged and shipped off to India. You can track progress every step of the way. A few weeks later you can review the low-res scans online. Here comes the good part: you can discard up to 50% of what they already scanned in. This is a life – OK, just budget – saver, when you consider how difficult it is to pick good pictures especially from negatives. Chances are you – like me- didn’t bother, just threw the whole bundle in an envelope, and would waste a lot of money paying for all of them, without the “select the best 50%” option.

Next you wait a few weeks, until you receive a package with your hi-res pix on DVD and all your originals back. You’ll be amazed at just how good image quality is – and now your photos are preserved in digital safety. Well, relative safety, at least – I suggest you read my older post on decaying digital media.

If it’s such a good service, is there anything not to like about ScanCafe? Yes, indeed. Although more annoyance than real pain (thanks to junk filters), ScanCafe turns out to be a major spammer. I’ve been receiving their email offers just about every second / third day ever since the first order. They are persistent – but I’m not sure persistence in this case is a positive virtue. If this was a proper marketing campaign, shouldn’t they have noticed that I am not responding ever? But it’s just brute force email spam.

In fact the story gets worse… Is it even possible that they are not aware of their own business model? Let’s see.

How many photos did you shoot this holiday season?

Did you drop the films off to be developed?

Has the lab lost any rolls?

Are you happy with the prints?

Have you kept the negatives?

Yeah, I thought so. And now, I’m not crazy, I know those questions belong to the 90’s. Which is exactly my point: film photography is almost dead. History. Which means most of us won’t become repeat customers for ScanCafe, not because we’re unhappy with it, but because they are in the one-time (or a few times) conversion business. Eventually there will be nothing left to digitize, since we’re not producing printed photos anymore.

That’s not to say ScanCafe is a doomed business. There’s still enough to digitize to keep them running for years, but unlike say ShoeBox, which does the same for your paper receipts, there’s no endless re-supply of analog photos, so eventually ScanCafe will need a new business model. And in the meantime they might as well stop spamming their (former) customers.

Of course bit.ly is not the only possible casualty, but they are the dominant one in the URL shortening space – or at least they have been so far…

But what most commentators haven’t noticed is another feature from Google: FeedBurner social, which might very well kill TwitterFeed. Yes, why bother with an intermediary when we can now have FeedBurner send our blog post to Twitter directly? Check out the URL for this very post on Twitter: it’s the shiny new goog.gl variety.

And it’s not over yet.. just as we’re absorbing what all this means, here’s news of Twittertestingbusiness features, including the ability of multiple users posting on behalf of one organization.. Somehow I don’t think CoTweet, HootSuite and a bunch of others are too happy about it.

Are they all doomed? Not necessarily – right now they all offer additional features (multiple accounts, scheduling, stats..etc), but nevertheless, it must not be very comforting when the Ultimate Giant enters their space…

Oh, yeah, I know … we’ll soon see the statements from all these startups welcoming Google, validating their markets…etc. 🙂

37signals is now a $100 billion dollar company, according to a group of investors who have agreed to purchase 0.000000001% of the company in exchange for $1.

Founder Jason Fried informed his employees about the new deal at a recent company-wide meeting. The financing round was led by Yardstick Capital and Institutionalized Venture Partners.

In order to increase the value of the company, 37signals has decided to stop generating revenues. “When it comes to valuation, making money is a real obstacle. Our profitability has been a real drag on our valuation,” said Mr. Fried. “Once you have profits, it’s impossible to just make stuff up. That’s why we’re switching to a ‘freeconomics’ model. We’ll give away everything for free and let the market speculate about how much money we could make if we wanted to make money. That way, the sky’s the limit!”

Hilarious… but I’m not quoting the whole thing, this already stretches the limits of Fair Use, so go ahead and read the original.

Update: I think $37B would have been more appropriate valuation, but I understand Jason does not want to leave small change on the table

The company had an affordable On-Demand integrated business management solution for the VSB – very small businesses, the “S” in SMB / SME: typically companies with less then 25 employees, sometimes only 3-5, and, most importantly, without professional IT support, in which case Software as a Service is a life-saver.

NetBooks tried to cover a complete business cycle, from opportunity through sales, manufacturing, inventory / warehouse management, shipping, billing, accounting – some with more success then others. The process logic, the flow between various functional areas was excellent, but it was rendered almost unusable by a horrible UI. And it didn’t scale… so the company disappeared for a long year, completely re-building their code base.

Not long after the “incident” his startup, Koral received funding, which, in hindsight was probably unnecessary: a few months later, barely out with a beta product Koral got acquired by Salesforce.com.

A few months later the “anti-VC” (not really) CEO has become a VC Partner himself.

In fact it will be more than a second chance: while the UtR event focused specifically on Cloud Computing, Launch 2009 is designed to uncover and showcase products and services from the most exciting of the newest startups in information technology, mobility, security, digital media next generation internet, life sciences and clean energy. The inaugural Launch event was in 2006, combined with Guy Kawasaki’s Art of the Start conference.

Are these events worth attending? It’s your call … all I can say is since 2006 presenting startups received a combined $80+ million in venture funding.

So if you are building the Next Great Business in the areas mentioned above, are (almost) ready for launch, meaning that by June 9th, 2009 you will have a product or service available, but have not been out in the marketplace for more than a few months, then by all means send an Executive Summary of no more than 2 pages to Launchsv@svase.org. Submission deadline: May 8th, 2009 – yes, just a few days left.(Garage Technology offers a useful Writing a Compelling Executive Summary guide.)

Last year over 300 companies from all around the country and even overseas applied, so clearly the presentation spots are in high demand. Based on the submissions up to 30 companies will be invited to present at the Launch: Silicon Valley 2009 event on June 9th at the Microsoft Campus in Mountain View, California. Presentations slots are 10 minutes, running in 6 sessions of 5 companies each. Each presenting team will also be assigned a cocktail table in the Networking Room where they can meet with interested audience members one-on-one to answer questions and explore possibilities.

The evening before, on June 8th the presenting companies, registered audience and selected bloggers and media will be invited to a Pre-Event Party at a prestigious location in Palo Alto, providing a further opportunity for networking with Silicon Valley’s movers and shakers.

So if you are a qualifying startup Founder, remember the deadline: May 8th. For additional details and later for updates check http://www.launchsiliconvalley.org/ and you may also want to follow the event (actually the President of SVASE) on Twitter.

Guy Kawasaki called Launch: Silicon Valley “the poor man’s Demo”. SVASE proudly wears that badge, since this is an event with a price tag that won’t keep any startups away. It’s your turn now: send in the Executive Summary and launch with SVASE in June.

(Cross-posted from CloudAve. To stay abreast of news, analysis and just plain opinion on Cloud Computing, SaaS, Business grab the CloudAve Feed here.)

We’re in a deep recession, VC investments dried up, startups are shutting down and the World is coming to an end… or not?

I’m just back from a very lively Under the Radar conference where 32 startups presented and the audience was full of VCs looking for the next investment opportunity. Those who missed the UtR deadline, or just did not fit this event’s profile (Cloud Computing) will soon get another change at Launch Silicon Valley, co-presented by SVASE, Garage Technology Ventures and Microsoft.

In between these conferences there re are several smaller, more intimate events, like the SVASE VC Breakfast Club series. After a long time I’ll be back moderating the next breakfast meeting this Thursday, April 30st in San Francisco. As usual, this will be an informal round-table where up to 10 entrepreneurs get to deliver a pitch, then answer questions and get critiqued by a VC Partner. We’ve had VC’s from Draper Fisher, Kleiner Perkins, Mayfield, Mohr Davidow, Emergence Capital …etc. This Thursday’s VC is Lars Leckie, representing the first exclusively software-focused venture firm, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners.

These breakfast meetings are a valuable opportunity for Entrepreneurs, some of whom would likely have a hard time getting through the door to VC Partners. Since I’ve been through quite a few of these sessions, both as Entrepreneur and Moderator, let me share a few thoughts:

It’s a pressure-free environment, with no PowerPoint presentations, live demos, Business Plans…etc, just casual conversation; but it does not mean you should come unprepared!

Follow a structure, don’t just roam about what you would like to do, or even worse, spend all your time describing a problem, without addressing what your solution is.

Don’t forget “small things” like the Team, Product, Market..etc.

It would not hurt to mention how much you are looking for, and how you would use the funds…

Write down and practice your pitch, and prepare to deliver a compelling story in 2-3 minutes. You will have about 8-10 minutes, the first half of which is your pitch, but believe me, whatever your practice time was, when you are on the spot, you will likely take twice as long to deliver your story. The second half of your time-slot is Q&A with the VC.

Bring an Executive Summary; some VC’s like it, others don’t.

Last, but not least, please be on time! I am not kidding… some of you know why I even have to bring this up. Arriving an hour late to a one-and-a-half-hour meeting is NOT acceptable, but we’ve had too many such incidents, so here’s a new rule: if you’re late by more than 20 minutes, you will not be allowed to join the session.

Here’s the event info page, and remember to register – the previous event with Hummer Winblad sold out in advance.